Favourites

Search

Why NexusDB?

I had a discussion with a colleague. He asked me: "Why do you use NexusDB? Why don't you use standards like Oracle, MSSQL, ..?"

As honest as possible: there are reasons to use NexusDB and reasons to use other products. NexusDB has a real strength in three areas: vertical applications, embedded within application servers and embedded within desktop apps. NexusDB is competitive in just about any other area as well, but in some cases there are reasons to select the other db's.

For vertical applications, it completely removes the need for a DBA and is extremely easy to install. If you are an ISV and are selling licenses / deployments of your system, NexusDB enables you to add those "standard" database licensing fees directly to your bottom line. The business reasons are undeniably in NexusDB's favor.

For embedded applications NexusDB is far superior to anything else out there. First, you get a powerful full-blown server that supports direct table access in addition to SQL. No other database gives you this power and flexibility. Second, the performance is better than the other embedded DB's (we suggest you run your own numbers if you doubt it). Third, you can expose NexusDB to external report writers or clients. This is an awesome capability for ISV's developing vertical applications.

Some companies use an embedded NexusDB server in their application server to implement caching in the middle tier. They put lookup tables and other things that take a long time to calculate in there. It's easy to do and improves the overall responsiveness of the system for users.

Overall, there is a lot about NexusDB and its flexibility and ability to complementing other databases makes it extremely useful.

Oracle is a fine database, but its *way* too bloated and too pricey for many of the applications it's used for. Even the Oracle Client is bloated...500MB install or something? If your customers or management like paying (at least) 10 times more (and for several years) for something that will do the same job as NexusDB then no amount of rational argument can dissuade them.

MSSQL is another fine database, but it is also becoming pricey. If your customers or management want a "standard" database, this is the one we'd recommend. The reason why people want "standard" databases is so they can "minimize risk" and there's not much you can do dissuade them either.

Several reasons in no particular order why NexusDB is very favourable choice:

support; can't get better than direct access to the developers of the code

full source code

superb design and implementation

royalty free distribution

easy to deploy/maintain

flexibility of deployment options (c/s or embedded)

performance

full featured

installation size: the whole server including SQL is one file with less than 5 megabytes